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[CoH/CoV] Chat: Issue 12 info arrives!

OP shamelessly stolen (but tweaked slightly!) from Gear Girl, who shamelessly stole it from Bucketman, who shamelessly stole it from Accualt. Pretty much all of the credit goes to them.

BREAKING NEWS!

INFORMATION FOR ISSUE 12 - MIDNIGHT HOUR!

What's new in Issue 12?

The Midnight Squad
An organization of mystics, the Midnight Squad has a secret to end the Rikti Invasion, but without your help, it will remain 'Lost' forever...

Cimerora
"The Midnighters hold many secrets within their walls, including a highly coveted Ouroboros crystal, enabling them to travel to the far reaches of time. There is a familiar threat in an ancient land and the Midnighters need the help of both Heroes and Villains to stop it. Players step foot upon the ancient land of the Roman Cimeroran Peninsula, where they battle deadly creatures, defend an ancient city and ultimately come face to face with the enemy of time itself. Throughout this journey players uncover the mysteries of power and the origins that guide them today."

Epic Archetypes...for Villains!
When a villain hits level 50, they now have two epic archetypes available: Wolf Spiders and Blood Widows. Each of these can branch off into their own different powersets - Wolf Spiders can work as either Bane or Crab Spiders and Blood Widows as Fortunata or Night Widows. All of this comes with a unique story, costume set, missions, and more.

Powerset Proliferation
With Issue 12 comes a brand new opportunity - almost every Hero and Villain archetype will gain access to powers that they didn't have access to before!

Hollows Zone "Gameplay Makeover"
"Significant changes have been made to the Hollows zone to make it more fun! NPC encounters have been rebalanced, including new spawns, new villain groups, mission door improvements, and a mobile hospital has been added to the entrance of the zone. Additionally, Meg Mason, a new contact, has been added to give out repeatable missions."

What else?
Configurable new power trays - customize your UI by placing them anywhere you want.
Contact display redesign - display your contacts as active and inactive, sorting them by a number of criteria.
Inspiration conversion - change three of one kind of inspiration into one of another.
Level-up boost - gain a massive (if temporary) boost to your stats on a level up, as well as full HP and Endurance.
Chat improvements - right click on character names in chat window to ignore, add to friends list, invite to team, etc. Drag any item (enhancement, inspiration, salvage, etc.) into the chat window so that you and others can click a hotlink to view the complete info box.
More real numbers - players can now display stats on powers before they choose them enabling more informed power selection and new temporary powers allow players to display enemy stats.

Credit for the following belongs to Accault.

How good is CoX?

Soooo good.

In this thread we discuss all things City of Heroes and City of Villains. For those new to our world here is a brief FAQ.

Get ready to put the tights on because Cryptic is serving up a 10 Day Free Trial. What does that mean? It means you get a the chance to play the Best Super Hero based MMO of All Time*for FREE!
*By best we mean only, though it is very good.

10 Day Free Trials, EXCELSIOR!

Any active (or inactive) subscriber can send out a few Friend Invites which have a 10 Day Free Trial. We simply need your e-mail to do so. If you decide you like the game and subscribe for two months the person who sent out the invite gets a free month of game time. Very niiiice.

PA plays on the Virtue server.

If you want in, make with the post asking for someone to PM you, then respond with your e-mail. We don't want to accidentally send one person multiple invites since there are only a limited number available. If you end up liking it you can buy the Good vs Evil edition in stores or online for $30 which gives you access to both games and a free month or get just CoH or CoV from the NCSoft store for $20 each. They also include a free month so for $40 you can get two months...meaning you pay $10 for the client instead of $15 when buying the GvE edition. It should be noted GvE comes with some special costume parts, badge, and a jump jet thingy that is okay. ALSO, if you are ACTUALLY INTERESTED and are WILLING TO PAY A MONTHLY FEE for a game someone MIGHT be able to hook you up with a Buddy Pass. All active CoXers got ONE Buddy Pass, which is a 10 day trial that lets you start playing the game for $15 a month afterwards without having to buy the client. Don't be a douche and try to get a Buddy Pass if you don't think you'll actually pay to play the game.

The 411 on City of Heroes/Villains, yo.

Character Creation is likened onto a game of its own.
At launch CoH had something like 3 trillion potentially different costume configurations. Since then they have easily doubled the number of costume pieces, not to mention added face scalers, particle effects, wings, capes, trench coats, etc. So the current number of potential costumes numbers somewhere in the range of awholefuckinglot.

Here is a sample of some of the PAers Team Night characters.

If you've ever wanted to be a robotic undead pirate with a leather fetish and fondness of 80's colorful fashion who can shoot electricity from his hands THIS is the game for you.
Download this Character Builder or Mid's Hero Designer for a list of all powers and Archetypes in the game.

Posts

Gameplay and Power to shoot lasers from your eyes!
CoH/V has your standard MMO ability bar where you click it and perform your special attacks but it isn't really your standard MMO combat.

Regular mobs die faster and you fight a hell of a lot more than one at a time. The bigger stuff, like Bosses or Giant Monsters, obviously take longer to kill.

You can strategically use Line of Sight and Knockback to your advantage.

Combat in large teams can quickly turn into chaos because of the number of enemies being fought at once. You'll see ten guys get blown off the balcony you are fighting on by an Energy Blaster while the Mind Controller forces the Boss to beat up his minions as the Tanker hordes another 15 enemies on him after the Defender just buffed the Scrapper to godhood who proceeds to run off and kill the next spawn over.

A small army of Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, etc under your control.

Ragdoll physics make you feel like a man. Mobs crumple when they die or get knocked around instead of playing the same animation every time.

Lasers...from your eyes. And various other places.

Mount? You don't need no mount! Flight, Super Speed, Teleportation, or Super Jump are obtainable at lvl 14 and allow you to haul ass around Paragon and the Rogue Isles instead of just walking. As early as lvl 5 you can obtain a temporary Jetpack to fly around with, just ask how in game.

PvP so fast it'll make you feel like a twitch gamer. Various PvP zones with different goals and rewards, like Battlefield style capture points or obtaining your own nuclear missile. No joke, you can get your own orbital nuke (store up to three) to use at anytime.

Badges which are like Xbox 360 Achievements for your character. You get EXP for finding exploration ones, you get others for killing X number of mobs or doing certian missions or finishing Task Forces, etc. If you get the right combination of badges it will unlock special powers or permanent Health and Endurance boosts.

Special "GTA" style missions. Stop a bank from being robbed, defeat some vandals, prevent an arson, stop a jail brake, etc. Alternatively as villain rob a bank, vandalize everything, start an arson, break a fellow villain out of jail, etc.

Physics engine that leaves shell casings, blown up robotic parts, ect on the ground that you AND your powers can interact with. Knock an enemy into a tree and a shower of leaves fall. Use Tornado in an alley and garbage gets thrown up from the dumpsters. Kick a guy of a balcony only to see his neck get caught between the railings so he dangles there in a gruesome, gruesome way.

You can also blow up lots of shit in Mayhem Missions. This is an in-game shot.

Oh ho, get 'em Tanker! None of this one enemy at a time, two if you are feeling frisky, crap.

He gives people cancer just by looking at them.

That pool table was right next to the guy who looks like a purple ball. That purple ball of electricity was thrown by that big Clockwork, exploded, and sent the table flipping end over end.

Here are trailers for the five most recent major updates.

Issue 7 - Destiny Manifest
The PvP zone they show is plays like a game of BF1942 with capturing strategic points. The zone actually changes looks based on who is winning. If one side is losing too badly their signature Heroes/Villains spawn to assist.

Issue 9 - Breakthrough
Invention System: We get [email protected] L00ts! Some amazing new enhancements including Diablo style set bonuses. Plus some new high level challenges for Heroes and Villains.

Issue 10 - Invasion
Invasion! The Rikti return and only the combined might of both heroes and villains will be able to repel them.

Issue 11 - A Stitch In Time
The mysterious Ouroboros organization, a group of beings from the ends of time, enlists the aid of Heroes and Villains to rewrite the past.

Team/Scheme Night
Every Tuesday from 8-10cst Heroes and Saturday 3-5cst Villains a bunch of PAers get together to play characters we only play at those times. It is great fun because you always know you'll get a big team, frequently we have three full teams running, and blast with fellow PAers. Sometimes we run Task Force races where separate teams try to blow through these huge story arcs in a race to see who is the best. Then we form a wang train.

Editor's Note: This has basically died out for the time being but should be back once activity dies down a bit. We just have too many fucking people who want to do other things right now.

Great CoX ResourcesParagonWiki is all kinds of useful and ever growing.

Mostly I'll wait for when they actually hire people. Right now it's, "Well we want this and we want that and we were thinking about Gear's mom...." which isn't really more than a bunch of hot air.

The talk that is, Gear's mom isn't that hot.

That pretty much sums it up..

What server are the PA super groups on?
Virtue, the unofficial RP server. Not that we really RP.

How do I join the PA Chat Channel?
To join simply type /chanjoin "Penny Arcade" and hit enter. Then right click a chat tab, click edit, and add Penny Arcade to the tab.
A useful bind is /bind l beginchat /send "Penny Arcade" This way every time you hit l (or any key you choose) it lets you talk to every member of the PAcrew who is on, no matter what character they are playing as. Alternatively you can just right click on the chat window and select the Penny Arcade channel and type away. Also you could simply set the Penny Arcade channel to the default in your chat tab and hit the little A button to type.

Here's how I have done my Global Chat since its inception (because I also dislike Accualt's bind)

Set Penny Arcade to default in my main Chat window.

/bind v, chat_ cycle

This lets me cycle through the various chat groups without click on the little letters or always having to remember to type /g Hay guys! etc etc

/bind lshift+v, chat_set a

Because the chat_cycle command makes me press 'v' eight times to get from Team back to Chat, and as far as I know /a still doesn't work. So if I was on the Team channel and want to go back to chatting on PA? just lshift+v and voila.

Yeah but how do I get in the Super Group?
The best way to go about this is to ask if anyone in the Global Chat can invite you.

Are there any rules for the SGs?
Don't be a giant ass, we don't like asses. Well we do but only when they are p.h.a.t.
The SG activity fluctuates so sometimes we have to boot inactive members. We do so based on last time they logged in.
The SG humbly requests everyone play in SG mode as much as possible as that is how we earn Prestige/Infamy to keep our base (and the teleporters) open.

Editor's Note: The SG limit has been increased so point two is less of an issue

I'm in! Now how does this SG costume work?
Click Super on the text window, Settings in the section that pops up, click accept on this new page, now toy around with the colors. You can opt to turn the SG emblem on or hide it. To turn on SG mode click the Enter/Exit Costume Mode in the Super window. While in SG mode you don't earn as much Influence/Infamy (after lvl 25, before you earn all Prestige and Influence/Infamy) but you do earn Prestige (used to pimp out SG bases) and have a chance to get Salvage (used to "craft" items for the SG bases).

Also of note many SG members use one of their extra costume slots to make a SG themed costume. For Power's Allegory the colors are any shade of blue and silver. We request that you use the darkest version of Blue instead of any black on the costume. For Power's Affliction the colors are any shade of red and silver. Red vs Blue...yeah, we are dorks.

Is there an easy way to find badges/plagues? I'm lost in Perez Park! Why can't I find any Circle of Thorns?
Whine, whine, whine. Back in my day we didn't know where anything was and we liked it. Now we have an easier way...you cheater. Here is a link to a webpage with a download that replaces all in-game maps with ones that have badges, plaques, mobs, and even Perez Park trails in them. Enjoy.

The game runs slowly for me: is there anything I can do to improve that?
Buy a new computer.

Alternatively, add this to the Target bar in the shortcut to the game:

-useTexEnvCombine

After turning all the settings down, you should be able to get a decent framerate. Though meant for laptops, this could also give you a better experience if you're using an ATI graphics card.

All TFs/Trials always spawn at a set rate above the highest member of the team (usually +2 to the highest member). Also, the amount of enemies in a spawn in any mission is determined by the number of people in your group, changing on the ODD Numbers. So the same amount of enemies will be in a door for a 3 man group as for a 4 man group. Pick up a 5th member and the spawns will go up.

Basically for determining the amount and level of enemies in a mission or TF, it goes through these steps:

For TFs/Trials:
1) Highest level party member
2) Number of people in party
3) Mission Difficulty setting of the Leader

For Missions:
1) Level at which the mission was received
2) Number of people in party
3) Mission difficulty of the owner of the mission
4) Level Cap for Villian group/Story arc

How does Experience work in CoH?
Here is Statesman with detailed answers just before I4s release.

On the top level, XP is divided by damage done. If two heroes both attack and defeat a single mob, each hero is given XP proportionate to the amount of damage received by the mob.

Within a team-up, XP is divided equally among each member, but levels are taken into account. So if a 35th level Blaster teams up with a 32nd level Tanker, the 35th level Blaster would receive proportionately more XP (on the assumption that the higher level character contributed more to the conflict).

When two or more different groups of heroes attack the same mob, the damage of each group is added up and used to divide the mob’s XP.

For every person in a team up, there is an XP boost. The experience points of each mob are multiplied by a value before being divided among the team members. Currently, the XP boost values are this:

Team Size XP multiplier
2 1.25
3 1.5
4 1.8
5 2
6 2.1
7 2.2
8 2.5

Sidekicking allows players to play at a level higher than their actual Security Level. While Sidekicked, a hero is considered to be at this higher level for XP division. But the hero receives XP depending upon the relatively levels of the mobs he faces. Example: my 15th level Scrapper is sidekicked to a 28th level Controller. For purposes of combat, my Scrapper is now 27th level. If I went out and fought 29th level minions, their XP would be calculated as if they were 17th level minions.

One thing to keep in mind is that as a sidekick, a hero is counted as a full high-level hero when doling out rewards even though he doesn’t have as many powers as a natural hero would. So the risk for the mentor (and teammates) is slightly higher but they get the same reward. If you are within 3-5 levels of your buddy you might want to think about being a regular teammate and not a sidekick: the rewards might be better. This will depend on the villains you are fighting, your aversion to risk, and the composition of your team.

While Exemplaring, a hero receives XP in a similar way. The hero’s actual level is brought down to that of the Aspirant. The Exemplar takes XP from mobs depending the relation of the Exemplar level and the mob level. Example: A 45th level Defender is Exemplarred down to 29th level. He fights a 30th level Minion. The Defender earns XP as though it were a 46th level minion. However, an Exemplar does not gain XP; anything earned is applied exclusively to XP debt.

Where can I download the client, if I need to?Click this Linky. The CoH and CoV client are one in the same.

Man, I remember the first CoH thread I made in G&T and how epic it was.
Then waking up one day to find it got moved to its own Hot Topic forum.
And then later in the day discovering I was a mod in the hot topic forum by accidentally editing someone else's post when I meant to hit the quote button. I was so confused.

Sonna says, "I will get on it and design some dresses and crap tomorrow and let me look at my calender, I'll give you a tentative date."
Probably be a Monday or Tuesday night, since she isn't on call then. If we need it to be a weekend night it'll have to be the 15th/16th.

I think the general consensus is "Good, but not as good as the new batch of players playing them may have you think". The new animation times for the powers are great, and it goes really well with the new Defiance. But its damage is still really low, and only gets lower as you come across stuff in the 30s and 40s with shedloads of Lethal resist. The only problem is, from a gameplay standpoint, /Dev does next to nothing to offset Archery's big problems, which are damage and endurance usage; you end up devouring your End due to the speed of the set and the frequency at which you use attacks.

A secondary like /Energy or /Elec does wonders to address both issues, but it tends to ruin 80% of the character concepts people may have for an Archer.

Man, I didn't even pick up stamina on my archer until the late 20s, and I had hasten going as often as I could.
The attacks cost a ridiculously small amount of end, you don't eat it up at all.
I'm also really tired of seeing the lethal resist argument. The mobs also get pretty much every other type of resist at that level as well, and scrappers, who have five lethal sets, seem to do alright.
As for the damage, it's not really as much lower as you're making it out to be. Really, only the first two powers are low, but they recharge incredibly quickly. The cone and targeted AoE do EXACTLY the same damage as AR's. The nuke does about 6 less damage than Full Auto, has a much smaller animation time, and it, much like FA, blows away conventional nukes in term of overall usefulness. The high damage arrow does about as much damage as snipes and things like blaze from the other sets. Furthermore, archery has an even higher base accuracy than AR, leaving it with 86.6% acc, base, opposed to 75% for the elemental sets.

With the animation times I'm almost tempted to make another, but I still don't quite get the love for /Dev. It would make sense a few Issues ago, where you could use Targeting Drone (and maybe tactics) and the inherent accuracy to potentially skip slotting for accuracy, but with IOs it's worthless. It really don't have any synergy.

The problem with all the blaster secondaries is that the force you into melee, which seems to me like it would hurt archery a lot more than other sets, because of redraw time. Dev is the only ranged-support set that blasters really have, in addition to being really the only set that makes any sort of conceptual sense with archery.

The problem with all the blaster secondaries is that the force you into melee

Thats because Blaster are not a ranged AT, they're a damage AT. The range at which its done is not all that relevant. Sure, you don't necessarily want to spend all your time in melee, but the danger of being in melee is vastly over rated IMO.

Ice is a very good secondary if you want to avoid melee by and large though. It has only three melee attacks, one of which is a hold. Shiver is an excellent tool for keeping mobs at range, as is Ice Patch. Ice Patch *is* PbAoE, which is unfortunate, but its something you can work with easily.

Hell, you could easily make a ranged only Arch/Energy and Perma-boost range with it.

As for concepts, there are more archer concepts going around than "guy who makes arrows/gadgets and has no other powers" If thats the concept you're going for, sure Dev might be the way to go, but with sufficient application of creativity, you can create a concept with any combination of powersets. AR/Elec? Mutation or Electrical generation gauntlets/implants/magical artificat, etc.

Yes I realize the broadness of the human mind makes almost any character concept possible. The point is most people seem to like the idea of arch/dev.

Also, WRT the half-sentence you quoted, the point is that Arch/ is singularly poor at melee combat because of the redraw times on your bow. You're in melee, you can't use range as mitigation, and you're wasting time in which other blasters would be blasting drawing your weapon.